Column of Fire
by Rashaka
Summary: As she felt the music build around them, felt his arms tighten, his hands touching the hot skin of her back, Buffy knew she’d been right to never dance with Spike before. [Season 6-ish, kinda vague. Semi-songfic to ‘Glycerine’, but not really. comm


Disclaimer: self-explanatory. For the rest, the beginning and ending lyrics belong to Bush and 'Glycerine', a beautiful and strange ballad that's quite possibly my favorite of any song I've ever heard.  
Summary: As she felt the music build around them, felt his arms tighten, his hands touching the hot skin of her back, Buffy knew she'd been right to never dance with Spike before.  Season 6-ish, kinda vague. Semi-songfic to 'Glycerine', but not really.

**Column of Fire**

**By Rashaka**

                 must be your skin that i'm sinking in  
                 must be for real cuz now i can feel  
                 and i didn't mind  
                 it's not my kind  
                 not my time to wonder why

        She wasn't sure how it had started, but now they were dancing.  
        For real.  Real dancing, with Spike.  Not dancing with kicks and punches, not dancing with words— dancing with the touches and the looks and the music.  Just… dancing.  
        There are so many words to describe dancing, she thought.  Sometimes you float, sometimes you swirl, sometimes you bounce, and sometimes you just sway. Dancing with Spike was none of those things.  It wasn't the tragic gentility and soft forbidden whisper of dancing with Angel, and it wasn't the warm, give-and-take of dancing with Riley.    
        Dancing with Spike was like dancing with water, dancing with fire.  It was fluid, rippling, and every touch seared even as it soothed.  The feel of it could wash over you like the embrace of the tide, comforting and smooth, or it could carry you away, spin you around and scald your skin until the heat became too much and you feared being burned alive from just being so close.  
        It was relief and it was tension, locked together where foreheads met, cheeks brushed, and hands caressed.  Dancing with Spike wasn't just dangerous or safe, forbidden or desired; it was all those things, but above all it was wicked.  Intoxicating.  Fascinating.  Hot and cold and more electric than any contact she'd known.  
        As she felt the music build around them, felt his arms tighten, his hands stroking the hot skin of her back, Buffy knew she'd been right to never dance with Spike before.  This closeness, this strange intimacy of movement with him was the unbreakable addiction, the drug that trapped you with one taste.  This was why Drusilla kept returning for him.  This was why Harmony had put up with his terrible treatment of her.  With Spike, it was all the same—the dance, the fight, the lovemaking.  He gave everything of himself, and demanded everything in return.  
        No words were spoken between them, yet emotions are anything but silent.  
        Buffy thought they might be in a crowd of people, but she couldn't tell.  She didn't want to open her eyes to find out; the thought of breaking the spell was unimaginable, unwanted.  She could feel the other dancers around them, sense the humans and monsters alike, hear their laughter or their whispers or the movement of their feet on the club floor.  Like everything else they were far away, and she and Spike danced alone in a column of fire in an ocean of sound.  Flamboyant intensity was a way of life for Spike, she reflected, and when she'd taken his hand to dance, some part of her must've known it would be different.  
        Perhaps if he had offered to dance with her months ago, she wouldn't've had to wake up each morning with an increasingly shorter list of reasons to go on living.  She could have woken up instead with a clear goal: go to the Bronze, and both lose and find herself in his arms, dancing till she was back again in that place where the world disappeared and everything made sense.  
        When the dance ended, as such things always did, when she turned from his marble chest and jagged blue eyes to look into the gaping faces of her friends, Buffy shuddered at the words he whispered hotly in her ear.  
        "You still dance well, pet.  As well as the night I met you."  
        His fingers untangled themselves from her hair, his breath left her neck, and his presence drifted, sinking into a crowd of strangers, and the safety of anonymity among the masses.  Her freedom, her hope, and her need to be alive drifted away with him.    
        After her eyes lost him to the throng, she turned to face the battle line.  She knew they would have things to say, that was a given, but their opinion on the subject no longer held sway with Buffy.  They had taken away her first paradise because they thought to save her—she would not let them make the same mistake twice.  This new paradise was hers to choose, and no one's to judge.  
        If they pressed, she could always lie.  She could always say it was just one dance.__

                 i needed you more  
                 when we wanted us less  
                 i could not kiss just regress  
                 it might just be  
                 clear simple and plain  
                 that's just fine  
                 that's just one of my names

..   
   
  



End file.
